Chinese DDoS knocks out Optus?

A two-hour Optus outage yesterday was caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, and while claimed customers say it was launched from China, Optus says it doesn't know the origin of the attack.

update A two-hour Optus outage yesterday was caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, and while claimed customers say it was launched from China, Optus says it doesn't know the origin of the attack.

"Internet outage has been resolved. It was caused due to DDoS attack originating from China. Extended network and upstream provider have filtered traffic to restore traffic flow," a user on broadband forum Whirlpool claimed to have been told by Optus subsidiary Uecomm this afternoon.

Optus told ZDNet.com.au that it experienced a "technical issue" with one of its international data links connecting it to the United States.

Customers on both Optus' Evolve network and its Uecomm service had earlier today complained of slow links. The company said customers would have experienced sluggish email or web pages that timed out.

"The fault occurred at 1:10pm and was resolved at 3:25 this afternoon. Optus apologises to customers for any inconvenience," Optus said.

A spokesperson confirmed to ZDNet.com.au that the outage was caused by a DDoS, but that it didn't know whether it was from China.